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 Hi!
I recenty had my piano tuned by a professional tuner. But I am a bit confused. I have a an app on my phone which gives the pitch of certain sounds. When I play the key of A it says something like 435hz (even if my ear hear that the piano was in tune but my listening skills are poor). It doesn't say 440hz. I am aware of other strings vibrating due to something called overtones but shouldn't it be 440hz? What is going on with my piano?
Doesn't piano tuners go by the exact pitch that a note should be? The standard is A=440 aftar all. Is this actually a problem? My ears couldn't hear that it was slightly out of tune so why even bother about this?

If your tuner tuned your piano to something other than A-440, you should have been told. Usually that is only done on really old pianos where pulling the strings to 440 runs the risk of breakage, or by request.

However, you should make sure your tuning app is calibrated properly. You could try a different app, or compare the note on your piano to a known pitch.

I agree with BDB that risk of string breakage is a probable reason for tuning the piano flat and that you should have been informed. There are a couple of other possibilities, firstly there are a few pianos around which were made to an older tuning standard and it might be that your tuner was being punctillious about this, secondly he may have found that the piano was roughly in tune at about 435Hz and decided to save time by tuning it where it stood. Which is very naughty.

I don't know if this is universal or only in France, nor do I know where you are, but here the dialling tone on telephones is set to 440Hz so you could test A natural on the piano against that or even test your tuning app. with it.

One way to answer the question is to ask the tuner.

+1

Rick

P.S. if you still have a telephone land line in the US, the dial tone should be A440. Plus, there is a US government number you can call at certain times of the day where they broadcast certain sound frequencies (but I don't have that number handy)

You can find plenty of A-440 sources on YouTube. And other websites have reference tones available on-line.

I just found an A 440 on You Tube, it goes on for 5'57". I wonder if there is any significance to 5'57"? Anyway I got fed up with it after about 17 secs which probably means that I'm a very shallow person.

Well, the piano tuner did not say anything at all. Piano tuners just do their job and then leave. This is how they work, I guess!
Anyway, do you think it matters if it is 440 or 435 since normal people don't have absolute pith?
Could there really be any problems at all? Is this even a problem?

But please explain this to me: a piano has overtones and thus you will hear other pitches than 440hz when depressing down the A (tuned to cocert pitch). So I will hear 440hz and 880hz and so on instead of just a single pitch. This what all the piano tuners on youtube say. How then would a tuning app be able to hear one single pitch?

Dial tone in North America is a combination of two tones: 350 Hz and 440 Hz

440 Hz is the fundamental and almost by definition the loudest component of the note and this is what your telephone 'hears'.

The A in the temperament octave should be exactly 440. The other A's (and other notes as well), higher and lower on the keyboard, may be "stretched" due to inharmonicity, but that won't effect the issue that concerns you: whether or not your piano was tuned to 440, and it sounds like it wasn't.

5 cents is not the end of the world (but the tuner should have told you). It'll only be an issue if you're accompanying other musicians, and even then only if they can't adjust their instruments accordingly, or trying to match something that was recorded at A=440).

If your piano sounds ok, meaning this A is not 5 cents flat relative to the notes around it, then it's not a really big deal.

435 hz is more like 19 to 20 cents flat. The tuner should of advised you.

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-centsratio.htm

There are some really interesting YouTube videos about this. But YouTube doesn't often cooperate for rural folks, and today it's throwing a fit.

How does the app determine if a piano is out of tune? Is there a way that I can evaluate my piano on my own?

A=440 is for a specific A key, then? Are the others scaled up and down from there?

This is so intriguing to me.

Will the piano be played with other instruments?
There have been a couple of occasions where I haven't set A4 at 440 Hz (speaking as an apprentice tech, not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt): I tuned one piano at 436 (where it was already), because it was so old that I was worried about string breakage. Another, I didn't have time (nor was I being paid) to do a multiple-pass tuning to "pitch raise/lower" the piano to 440, so I didn't pitch raise the piano that much in the hopes of providing a stable tuning in one pass. Also, it was a 45+ year old spinet and I didn't want to deal with string breakage/replacement on it... So far, I've only popped one string when pitch raising a piano significantly, though I've probably only performed about 70 tunings.

Both times the piano wasn't brought up or down to 440, I communicated with the piano owner clearly during my visit.

MooseNotes, I'm petty much an amateur, but the note A-4 (5th A up from A-0, first note to the left on the 88 key keyboard) is supposed to be tuned to 440 hertz, to be considered concert pitch; unless the piano is tuned a bit higher. Some pianists have their piano tuned to a higher A-442 or even A-443. But I think A-440 is the most common.

From the left/bass side of the 88 key piano, you've got A-0, A#-1, B-1, C-1, C#-1, D-1, D#-1, E-1, F-1, F#1, G-1, G#-1, A-1; that's the first octave. Then, the notes go all the way up to C-8, the last note on the 88 key keyboard.

My piano tuning software uses all sharps for the black notes.

And, yes, it is very interesting!

Rick

Oops. You are correct. Still not the end of the world (imo).

Moose, the pitch to which pianos are tuned has historically been very variable, and was only standardised as late as the 1930s. Traditionally, the A above middle-C has had the honour of being taken as the reference point. According to the modern standard this A should have a frequency of 440 vibrations per second ("Hertz"). This is conveniently referred to as "A=440". As you say, the frequency for the other notes will be taken from there. So for example, A3 will be 220, and A5 will be 880. Period-instrument ensembles generally use a lower pitch, frequently A=415. The history of the pitches to which instruments have been tuned is complex and fascinating, see for example this page.

My piano (an antique Bluthner) has the words "TIEFE STIMMUNG" printed on the plate, near the tuning pins. This means "low tuning". I still have not got to the bottom of this, but I think this refers to the Paris convention of 1859, which specified A=435. Before WW1, the wording for such Bluthner pianos was "PARISER STIMMUNG" (Paris tuning), but the wording was changed during the War for obvious reasons.

It has been suggested to me that this 435 was "low" not with reference to 440 (which was not the standard then), but relating to common pitches at the time, which were typically higher still.


Traditionally this was done using a tuning fork. You might enjoy getting one!

Yes, if it really is that the tuner used 435. The other possibility is that this app on a cell phone isn't all that reliable and accurate. What does the app use as a frequency reference?

The app I'm using says 440hz for my digital piano and 435 for the acoustic upright. I don't know how accurate this is but way better than my ears.
And what do you mean by frequency reference?

John is pretty piano smart, and I can't speak for him; but I think he means "calibration benchmark". A reference point is like a cornerstone or benchmark where things start and are built from that point, beginning at the benchmark.

For example, an A440 tuning fork can be "off the mark", i.e. A438 or A442, if the atmospheric pressure and temperature surrounding the tuning fork are above or below standard conditions. Or, a low quality A440 tuning fork may be off a bit due to quality variations.

At least I think that is what he meant by frequency reference.

Rick